Guild Wars 2

It was the best event from the betas imo, especially when you are one of the last people alive and desperately running away from the pings the robots gave. I ended up being near a place that kind of matched the area where Peeta and Katniss holed up. There was the cave they stayed in and a river outside the cave. I really hope they bring it back to do just for fun, and do all the different maps.

Gilded, especially if you run dungeons. You can rock a solid 105% with 20 from the infusion, 15 from the armor runes, 40 from food, 30 from the booster.

Dcollins.6973:

I’m wondering if the +20% Gold from Monsters, +20% Magic Find, +15% experience and +15% Karma Infusion that you can put into the Ascended Rings and Amulet stack?

If I bought 3 and put em in my Ascended Rings and Amulet would I get +60% Gold from Monsters?

I got ultra excited about this too and thought that something like 150% gold was possible. Luckily my curiosity got the best of me and wondered why 3 amulets had the same stats and just a different name. It turns out each set of stats has three amulets, one for offensive infusions, one for defensive infusions, and one for utility infusions. Sadly, those new infusions are utility infusions, so only 20% more gold for me D=

Double check your temps. It seems like either your CPU or GPU are throttling down because of intense temperatures. This would result in decreased performance as you have experienced, then when the temperatures are back in the ‘OK’ zone, your hardware goes back to normal operation. It sounds like you might be just on this threshold between the ‘OK’ zone and the Danger Zone =D

IvanHoe.3468:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Any game that has to deal with rendering interactive objects and large numbers of players will be CPU bound, in the end.

That won’t change unless there’s a shift in GPU technology.

That is blatantly false. Provided decently optimized shaders and not counting for postprocessing effects, the only thing limiting the rendering speed of a scene is the vertex and polygon count. The CPU interaction here is minimal, little more than an operator transferring calls to the GPU.

Depending on the middleware they used on the game, the CPU may be more taxed. By having to process physics, animation, collision and reflections the CPU can quickly become overburdened when too many calculations are required at once. This can be remedied by using adequate middleware (Nvidia’s physicsX instead of havok for example) that offloads these tasks to the GPU, and/or by using good occlusion techniques.
Of course with today’s quad core CPUs being so common, they can set one or two cores to process these tasks and have the rest free to transfer API calls.

The CPU should never be a limitation, if it is there is a severe design blunder.

Speaking of which, I just bought the game and came here to inquire about the game installer setting my CPU and GPU to max performance power state, causing my temps to go up and the fans to become noisy. This is ridiculous considering the download is going to take at least 4-5 hours.
I any case, I had never heard of any performance problem until now and the Youtube videos I’ve seen appeared very smooth and fluid but If the game has performance issues that is a definite showstopper for me.

You should take a look around these forums, there are some definite optimization problems with the current game. Be prepared to get lower than expected FPS in LA (main town) and chaotic battles in WvW (100+ man fights).

The current client size is around 15.5GB IIRC. If you have a friend that has a nice internet connection, they can download it for you and give it to you on a decent sized flash drive.

Well, I would test your stability after overclocking before jumping in gaming right away. I would recommend downloading Prime95 and running that for a few hours to make sure your CPU is stable at the new frequency. Personally, I’m not a fan of auto overclocks, I prefer to manually do it so I know what the settings are exactly.

A lot has been added since the release of the game, but the way the percent works is by the number of files remaining to be downloaded, not about how much GB is left to download. Meaning, you could be downloading all the large files first, and leaving the smaller ones later.

You won’t be able to play on high settings with a GTX 650. Also, if you go the AMD route, go with the FX-8350. If you go the intel route, an i5-3570K or i7-3770K.

hoegarden.4287:

Probably it is an i5 first generation too. They were good 2 years ago. Now they are pretty low in speed. Buying a laptop who will run GW2 with full options will not be cheap….

I will admit that the first gen stuff is slower than 2nd/3rd gen hardware., but its not that slow. I have a laptop with a i5 M520 and a Quadro FX 880M graphics card and it gets 30 fps on lowest settings in LA. I think that the laptop probably has a low end graphics card which is hampering his experience. Either way, its time to buy a new machine, but my guess is that they are lacking the graphics power and not the CPU power.

My siblings have a E6320 C2D @ 2.4Ghz and used to have my old 9800GT. They got single digit frames with that configuration, but then I got them a GTX 650Ti and now they can run the game better than my aforementioned laptop.

To OP:
If you can dish out 1k for a portable gaming computer, wonderful, but I highly recommend a desktop for gaming.

The karma cap used to be 1 million, then they increased it. AFAIK no one has reached the new cap yet.

I have heard that is it not worth it. Exotics do drop, precursors can drop, but you can also get L78 rares. I heard rares drop much more often than exotics, thus I would look at it as a few ectos.

I wish there was a way to lower the price without pulling it off the market. I got a precursor, sold it for a few gold under the current lowest seller. I come back the next day and there are a handful more that are a few gold less than mine. Now there are 10+ cheaper than mine and like you, I am stingy about my money.

akhrod.7130:

I know it’s probably my CPU, but it’s not about the frequency., because my wife’s PC is a 3.2GHz Phenom II X4 and the game it’s smooth as butter.
I’m really asking WHY it worked in the stress test and in the first month, just to know what is changed. The servers were full of people and it ran great anyway.
Now when I’m in a zone with a lot of architecture (big cities, WvW) it becomes unplayable, and it’s usually choppy and not so pleasant to watch.

You’re correct, its not about frequency, its about single thread performance. Frequency helps achieve this, but ultimately its all about the architecture of the CPU.

During the stress test, they might not have had everything implemented yet. If I were you, I would try to overclock your CPU and see what happens.

Yeah, looks like it is time to RMA the card. Sorry, I don’t know what else to check.

As SolarNova said, its your CPU. I’m running a 930 @ 4.1 and it’s still the part holding my frames back.

However, as for the discussion about more RAM or not. I initially ran 6GB and it works fine for what I needed it for. That is, just gaming and video/audio encoding. However, I decided to have some fun with my computer and since RAM is so cheap, I bought another 18GB so I could have enough space for a RAM disk just for GW2.

+1 for the picture, that looks awesome!

Firstly, as stated, check for a heating issue.

Have you overclocked your graphics card at all? Did it come with an overclock already on it from the manufacturer? If so, you might have to tone the overclock back to get acceptable parties again (of the non-disco variety).

Do you get crazy effects like this while playing other games? If so, this could be a problem with the card itself going bad.

cyberpowerpc is where my girlfriend got her build. It was actually cheaper to get it through cyberpowerpc than buy all the parts separately. Normally I’m a huge advocate of building your own, but a prebuilt solution was cheaper for some reason.

With that though, the 610 Nvidia graphics card is trash for games. It goes great with a media center pc, but for gaming you’re going to want at least a GTX 650 Ti / AMD equivalent.

I feel like you can do better than a FX4100 as well at the 750 dollar bracket. The FX 4100 would work for GW2, but it will struggle in crowded areas, like LA/WvW battles/some dynamic events. If I might recommend a few choice CPUs, the FX 8350 or an i5 3570K is what will get you the most out of this game. GW2 currently favors higher single thread performance CPUs, which is where Intel strides ahead. Even with the two processors mentioned above, you will still need to overclock them to get 30fps in the most extreme cases in GW2 (mainly 100+ man WvW battles). However, if you have a burning hatred for Intel, the FX 8350 is the choice on AMD’s side.

Looks at the minimum requirements for GW2

Looks at what you posted

Nope. Grab a discrete graphics card, something like at least a GTX 650Ti or AMD equivalent for medium-high settings on a 1080p resolution.

If you’re looking for a good time in WvW, I would ditch that processor as well and roll either a FX 8350 or an i5 3570K.

However, you got the amount of RAM right! =D Just make sure it’s at least 1600 and you’re good to go on RAM.

If you’re looking for smaller load times, roll a hard drive (for media/data) and a solid state drive (for games and windows 7/8).

8.5/10

If you WvW, you can overclock that CPU and get decent frames (30), even in the largest of battles.

Other than that, all I see missing is an SSD, which is really only for load times.

Probably on lowest settings, the processor is on the lower side as well as the graphics card.

You should be able to toss the broom in the bank’s storage and pick it up on another character.

Banks are located in all major cities, on the map they are depicted with a money bag symbol, and as you know, they can also be accessed at all crafting stations.

The backpack is only a skin, its not an item. You apply it to another back item using the transform window that opens which you have experienced already. All you need to do is get a back item you want to use, choose the quaggan skin, choose the stats from the other back piece, choose the upgrade item from the other back piece (if there is one), and hit the ‘OK’ button at the bottom.

12.5 USD, but you’ll have to buy 1600 gems more than likely since they don’t sell gems in 1000 increments. They sell them in 800 increments.

Awesome.6120:

More people around for events means more mobs spawn means more loot.

means more exp and generally, more fun! =D

Labyrinth.7201:

@Curuniel – I understand the large scale groups to take out events and such, but it seems most of the major events are flooded with players from the map anyway.

@SlimGenre – I know that dungeons are the main portion of leveling once you hit 30+. Like most games, dungeons are the way to go unless you like the story line and questing.

@Ilithis – That is the whole reason I got into GW. I like the fact that a lot of the game is based on playing coop instead of solo. I left SWTOR/WoW because of that.

The only thing I don’t really like is that after I have finished my hearts/vista/skill ups, (too low to start the others) I have to wonder around for events, gathering materials, or just grind out on mobs in the area.

A suggestion would be to complete the other zones that are similar in level. There are 5 zones that are level 1-15. The zones are pretty unique and you can get to any of them from the get-go.

The wiki page on sigils is a good read for some of these topics:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil

To answer the question about having two on-critical hit proc sigils:

Path 1 (You don’t crit):
Not much happens.

Path 2 (You crit):
The system checks your main-hand sigil, then rolls a dice to see if it falls within that 30% chance to proc. If it does, then the ability will trigger and a CD starts for ALL on-critical hit sigils. The game will then look to your off-hand sigil. Since its an on-critical hit one, its on CD. GW2 skips it. Once the CD expires, the abilities can trigger again.

Say when you crit and the game rolls a dice for your main-hand sigil and it DOES NOT fall within that 30% chance window. GW2 will look to your off-hand sigil. Since it’s an on-critical hit sigil, it rolls a dice to see if this one triggers. If it triggers, then ALL on-critical hit sigils go on CD. If it does not trigger, then the system waits for you to score another critical hit.

While one on-critical hit sigil is on CD, none others may activate.

I had a group of 7-8 friends that all got on to play alts on one day of the week. We ran around doing hearts and events and what not. Some people did advance through hearts faster than others, but when someone finished the heart, they would help the others by killing things in the area or gathering materials just for the minute or so it took the slower person to complete the heart. This game is ten times more fun running around PvE with a group of people.

With Fractals and the recent change, you can join any group. I would recommend NOT joining any group that goes past L10. At L10 agony starts to happen, but L10 is where you can start getting ascended rings which give agony resistance. Anything past L10 you’re asking for a lot of pain if you can’t dodge the agony attacks.

I would assume the latter as well. Without knowing something’s hp before hand there is no way of knowing. I would suggest testing in sPvP with someone.

I get this problem as well, but I got it after messing with the Nvidia Control Panel graphic options. I set the options back to their original values before I messed with them, but the problem persists.

Might want to have a mod move this to the Mac forums. You will probably get a better response from that forum rather than here.

Interesting idea, the only problem I see with this is that the people who get there might be tossed into an overflow depending how busy/popular this idea becomes. However, this would make leveling an alt nice and breathe life back into lower level PvE areas.

Orpheus.7284:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

I just recently got a Howl in CM P2 from the Bloody Victoria boss chest (post 1-28).

A friend got The Legend in the maw fractal, I forget which even number fractal level it was (pre 1-28).

The Bloody Victoria boss is CM P1 iirc. Congratulations!

So it is, goes to show how excited I was!

Soulbound. You should be able to get the L2,4,6,8 daily on your main and on your alternate character.

Likely from what you’re describing, its your CPU that is actually limiting you. 50% load is taken across all your cores, so the ones running GW2 are probably maxing out or very close to maxing out. I would check each individual core’s use before deciding to buy anything.

I do have to say though, a GTX 550Ti is on the lower end of the spectrum for graphics cards. Personally I run a GTX 560 Ti – 448 edition overclocked slightly. I run on highest everything (besides supersampling) and my best FPS in LA and WvW fights is closer to 30fps. This is because I’m running a i7 930 overclocked to 4.1Ghz which is bottlenecking my fps. Everywhere else when its not crowded, I get 50+ fps.

GW2 requires superb single thread performance, even the latest intel/AMD processors are bottlenecked when overclocked.

I don’t know AMD cards well, but I wouldn’t get anything over a GTX 570 or GTX 660Ti, unless you’re going to inject better AA, like SweetFX.

I just recently got a Howl in CM P2 from the Bloody Victoria boss chest (post 1-28).

A friend got The Legend in the maw fractal, I forget which even number fractal level it was (pre 1-28).

Lets say strength is on your main-hand and frailty is on your off-hand. When you critically hit, the system checks to see if your RNG is good on your main-hand (30% of the time it is). In this case the strength will proc. Then, both sigils go on CD, therefore frailty will not be checked or triggered. If strength does not proc, it checks your off-hand, if it procs, both go on CD. If neither strength or frailty proc, then the next time you crit, the same process repeats. While sigils are on their invisible CD, they will not be checked for proccing.

I believe the math comes out to be 51% that one or the other will proc when they are not on CD.

I know friends that have done this in the past, there is nothing wrong with sending gold around so everyone can get this achievement.

In my experience this happens when you’re being targeted by an NPC with a heavy hitting single target attack. If you ever run the CM dungeon, the riflemen use this on you since they hit like trucks.

If you’re looking for a group for a dungeon, use gw2lfg.com.

Just curious, did you actually check and see any of GW2’s processes eat more RAM? Did you run memtest on the sticks to make sure they are fully functional and not faulty? I had a similar experience with BSODs in GW2, but it was a result of a bad stick of RAM that never showed itself until playing GW2. To make sure it’s a good stick, I would run memtest on the stick and let it be the only stick in your system while playing GW2.

As Guy said above, the CPU is alright. The glaring problem is the GT520, its a media card, not a gaming card, you can probably get away with low/medium settings. I would recommend at least a GTX 650Ti.

Computer 1: a 6 year old processor…

Computer 2: a 2 year old processor BUT with the minimum requirements for graphics.

You’re looking on playing on lowest settings with both these machines.

As for what you should be looking for, graphics wise with playing on medium to high, a 560M or AMD equivalent or better.
As for a processor, an i5-3380M or better would do. You’d still have bad frames in a crowded area like LA, and massive battles in WvW.

I’d also recommend a 64 bit version of Win7, and 8GB of RAM.

You’re going to spend quite a bit of money to get a decent laptop to run GW2. With mobility comes a price, a deeper pocket.

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

no no no, anet must do something to support people with slow or capped connections, after all, they went to all the trouble of supporting windows XP for gw2(an where the majority of people running it are on systems that really cant run the game in any decent fassion)

Bangs head into desk

anet needs 2 sets of servers, 1 for people on xp and slow connections, where they only get sporatic updates and very little direct support, then one for the rest of us…..possibly they could even work out a dx8 code path for those gw1 players who dont want to upgrade their systems that still play gw1 fine :P

Smells strongly of sarcasm…I agree =D

I would imagine that whatever character you used to complete the level would advance a stage. This would work exactly like logging onto an alt when fighting the last boss of a dungeon to get the exp on the alt rather than a main.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil at the very bottom of the page.

In short though, yes.

It really depends what you are going to use the machine for. If you’re just gaming and doing menial tasks, I’d run with an i5. If you’re encoding video/audio, I would roll an i7. I roll an i7 first gen but that was because I had the ability to go to Microcenter versus online outlets like TigerDirect and Newegg. For instance, right now the 3770K on Newegg is 330, whereas at Microcenter its 230.

Stigolas.9207:

My guess is they are having bandwith problems with the servers.

I would agree with this because of guesting. That server might be experiencing a high number of people guesting to the server. Arenanet might not have anticipated the anticipation of the guesting feature and arenanet might have miscalculated the amount of resources it takes to have so many people guest on one server.

This game is very CPU dependent, the reason being is that GW2 requires strong single thread performance, which Intel CPUs supply better than AMD at the moment. AMD generally has more cores, but GW2 does not take advantage of them.

Girls On Top was a guild in GW1 that always won HA which gave me a chuckle every time I saw them win.

Ascalon Electric Company was another guild from GW1.